


I crown thee king of intimate delights

by Anonymous



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: M/M, boring magic stuff, disinterested sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 21:17:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4321083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Childermass has snoozefest sex with Norrell that's it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	I crown thee king of intimate delights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



“Well?” Norrell met him at the door, holding his candle up to see Childermass’s face and draw inferences from his expression. Gilbert Norrell was a man of advanced, wonderful, and arcane learning, but he was stupid in social custom and did not know that a man returning from business well past midnight wanted to put his coat away before being questioned.

Childermass rolled his eyes. “Well?” he said, and had to flinch backward when Norrell moved the candle abruptly closer.

“Well, how did it go? What was their reaction?”

“The York Society's?”

“Of course the York Society's, seeing all the stones of the minster brought to life, what did they say? What was your impression of what they perceived, and did they understand it? Did they comprehend I was not present?”

“They have some bright gentlemen among them, who noted your absence,” said Childermass, and put his coach coat on the mantelshelf when it became clear that there was no one else to take it from him. “The house is all asleep, then?”

Norrell, sensing a practicality, ignored this question. “The remoteness of the undertaking I daresay is the key to its respectability, and must not be played down. Did you tell them, I ask again, and did they understand? I do not do magic from my library for my own comfort!”

Childermass raised both of his eyebrows.

“Not entirely for my own comfort,” Norrell amended. “And I say that the presence of a practical magician so close to his own work is vulgar. I shall write to their disbanded members and explain it.”

“Tomorrow,” said Childermass, and followed him up the stairs.

“Yes, tomorrow, of course, I am worn out today.”

“If you are worn out,” said Childermass, “then I will leave you.”

“I mean I am not inclined to compose a letter,” said Norrell, and his impatient tone did not change as he said: “Not that I wish to miss our engagement.”

They had reached the top of the stair, and then the threshold of Norrell’s own bedroom. Childermass closed the door behind them, and locked it, and in the low light of Norrell’s candle, covertly checked the time on his pocket-watch.

Before his employment at Hurtfew Abbey, Childermass had never known one Englishman to bugger another with his nightcap still on. But Gilbert Norrell was in a multitude of ways very singular, and unvarying in his habits, and moreover claimed that his head was very often cold.

Childermass, whose upbringing had been sufficient to ensure that he was never cold while inside four walls, stripped himself to his shirt, and next to Norrell in his nightgown, cap, and slippers, they looked less like men of unequal rank and more like men going to bed in two very different climates.

“It is very good of you to go on my behalf,” said Norrell. Years ago he had taken up the habit of giving Childermass an obscure compliment on the performance of that day’s duties while dabbing linseed oil onto the palm of his right hand. 

“I can do that for you,” Childermass offered, and according to his habit Norrell refused. 

“A practical magician,” said Norrell, untying the sash of his nightgown, “has nothing to fear in the world, and least of all the prospect of his own pleasure.”

Still, there was a long stretch of silence before Norrell’s cock had achieved sufficient erectness. Childermass could hear the hands of his own pocket-watch ticking quietly. “What approach did you use?” he asked.

“Titus,” said Norrell, “writes that life must be had and lost in order to be temporarily granted, but that there is objective potential for animation everywhere. It was then a simple matter of extrapolating what is that potential, and arousing it from some distance. Therefore you see that a magician, himself alone, may be a life-bringer in England, without appeal to such lost creatures as were our historic familiars. If you would bend over the bed, it has been a tiring day, and I am in no condition to arrange you otherwise.”

“Perhaps,” said Childermass, but obliged him, “we had better try it at some distance.”

Norrell shivered when his erection touched Childermass’s backside, and withdrew it abruptly into his own hand, lending some credence to his insistence upon the nightcap. “Your skin is cold,” he said, disapproving of it.

“It is snowing outside. Where,” he was compelled to remind Norrell, “I have only recently been.” In fairness to his employer, however, the physical closeness and his own slow arousal had warmed him up well.

“I shall light the fire next time,” said Norrell. “But now I am too tired.”

“How?” Childermass asked, and the curiosity put more heat in his chest and vigor in his cock. “Theoretically.”

Norrell then very generously relocated his hand first to Childermass’s hip and then his cock. He tentatively allowed his own erection to touch his servant’s backside, and, satisfied that it would not freeze off from the contact, considered the question.

“I should think it a simple matter. Control over elements mind you, is neither straightforward nor modern, and I would not attempt to create, through magical means, fire where there has been none. But heat is easily done, and in any quantity,” he concentrated, then, on the tuneless movement of his hips, and made several wordless sounds, which Childermass privately observed were the very same exclamations he uttered when he found that a footnote offered satisfactory clarification.

“Heat, you were saying is easily done,” Childermass steered him, patiently.

“Heat, yes, in sufficient quantities, with tinder and wood, will create fire. It is in Belasis, who performed something similar when his beef went cold one New Year’s Eve.”

“He controlled this?”

Norrell grit his teeth, and his attention wavered again. “Controlled -- what do you mean?”

“Belasis,” Childermass reminded him.

“No, he burnt his supper,” said Norrell. “But Belasis was not a careful man. And moreover he lived alone, with no household. He is to be pitied.”

When Norrell finished, Childermass brought him a flannel from his shaving bowl, and inquired about the specifics, and in this manner was able to heat his room very competently when he at last retired.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> for tumblr user sathinfection who wanted disinterested childermass/norrell sex
> 
> title is from a cowper poem about winter because what's more English Magic than that.


End file.
